Understanding Your Injury & The 4 Common Types of Exercise Injuries

You put in the time and effort to get better and stronger at whatever skills you’ve been working on, and something went wrong. Maybe your foot slipped and you got an acute injury, or maybe your shoulder just started hurting, seemingly out of nowhere.

Regardless of the cause, it can be tough to figure out precisely what’s wrong and how to get your body back in action, which is exactly where this article and its subsequent chapters will help you out.

In chapter one (the page you’re on), we’ll start by arming you with a better understanding of your injury and how it came about.

Then, in chapter two, we’ll talk about what you should and shouldn’t avoid with these different types of injuries.

And finally, in chapter three, we’ll give you some recommendations for resources that will help you on your road to recovery.

I’ve worked with countless patients over my 18 years of experience as a Physical Therapist, and we’ve helped thousands of clients at GMB, at every level of practice, with addressing injuries and limitations so they can get back to living and enjoying their favorite activities.

We’ve helped clients deal with everything from twisted ankles to chronic neuromuscular diseases, and though we don’t give medical advice, we have a lot of experience helping people figure out how to get beyond limitations. Trust us, we’ve seen all the injuries discussed in this article (and more), so we know you can get back to the activities you love.

It’s just a matter of knowing what you’re dealing with, and taking the right steps to get you to where you want to go.

If you’re injured now, or have been in the past, this article will give the knowledge you need to get back to doing what’s important to you as soon as possible.

When Should You Seek Medical Help?

It’s pretty common that you’ll know exactly what caused your injury, but sometimes that won’t be the case. Either way, the first step to overcoming your injury is to become more familiar with what’s really going on with your body.

But before we get into the most common causes of injuries, it’s important to know when you should seek immediate medical attention from a professional (besides the obvious broken bone or the like). Go see your doctor immediately if you experience any of the following:

Numbness or tingling in an area that hasn’t subsided within a few days of first noticing it.

Significant weakness (not related to pain), such as consistently dropping cups of coffee, or a foot dragging when you walk.

Pain that consistently wakes you up at night.

Sharp, “shooting” pain that goes down your arms or legs.

Any pain from trauma (sprained ankle, wrist, fall onto shoulder, etc.) that doesn’t improve significantly within a week or so, and with pain greater than a 5 on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being most painful).

Fever, weight loss, or any other vital changes happening for no apparent reason.

Basically, this is all bad stuff. Don’t wait to get things checked out by your physician if you experience any of these symptoms. These could be signs of significant issues and it’s best to go sooner rather than later.

4 Most Common Types of Training-Related Injuries

If you’re dealing with an injury, it almost definitely falls under one of the following 4 types of injuries.*

*The identification of these four injury types comes from Erl Pettman.

1. Was Your Injury Caused By Trauma?

Trauma is a no-brainer cause of many injuries, and it’d be pretty hard not to know when this happens, as it is characterized by its quick and obvious nature.

The level of injury will correspond with the force of the trauma (in other words, if the damage is worse than it seems like it should be, it’s probably another type of injury)

Examples of this happen all the time in daily and recreational activities. Falls and collisions, tripping and twisting your ankle, and/or your kids jumping on you while you’re on the couch (not that that’s happened to me…)–these are all really common sources of injury.

With trauma, the force must be clearly proportional to the injury, and the extent of the damage is known almost immediately.

The amount of swelling, bruising, and pain will indicate how bad off you are, and you’ll usually know right away if you need to go get your injury checked out by your doctor. Of course, if you experience any of the symptoms above within a few days, go see your doctor anyway.

To be clear, “I bent over to pick up a sock, and my back went out” is not trauma!

Yes, there seemed to be a specific incident that caused your back pain, but if you bend over to pick up stuff all the time, why did you injure yourself this particular time? A good rule of thumb is if it seems your pain is out of sync with what just happened, it is most likely due to a combination of the complex factors listed below.

2. Was It An Overuse Injury?

This type of injury is common among “weekend warriors” who (for example) might go all out at a pick-up basketball game on Saturday after not having moved that much in a long time.

Overuse problems are different than a repetitive stress injury (which we’ll talk about next). The difference is that overuse is distinguished by a relatively fast breakdown in tissue, because of the introduction of a stress that the structure is not equipped to tolerate.

The cause is a distinct change in your “environment,” whether that is a new sport or a new pair of shoes.

The change can be easily identified and the symptoms appear almost immediately–usually within a few days, and sometimes as soon as a few hours.

A common example is helping someone move out of their house. Unless you’ve been lifting weights regularly (and even if you have been!), I bet you’ll be feeling some tweaks and strains later in the day or the next morning.

Another typical case is adding an extra day of training when your body is just not up for the extra stress.

Perhaps you are getting just enough rest and recuperation on your regular off days from training, and you are not able to tolerate the extra work. If you ignore these symptoms of the “new ache” in your shoulders, or the shin splints that you haven’t had since you ran track in high school, you may be setting yourself up for long term problems.

3. Did Your Injury Come From Repetitive Stress?

This type of injury is often a head scratcher, where you don’t necessarily know the exact cause of the issue. Unlike a traumatic or overuse injury, there wasn’t a specific event that precipitated this injury.

Repetitive stress injuries are formed by a slow buildup of irritation to a tissue, occurring over the course of weeks, months, and perhaps even years, before symptoms are noticed.

An example is the carpenter who works for years and years without difficulty, yet now notices a lingering pain in his wrist that is worsening. When questioned, he may recall that there was a gradual deterioration in his performance.

Another example from my practice is when I treated a farrier (person who shoes horses) once who had been working for years without trouble but had intense elbow pain for some time before he came in for treatment. But that slow deterioration can be difficult to notice until the pain becomes too much to ignore.

One example from physical training may be that in your sessions you initially feel an ache in your shoulder which comes and goes. But some months later, you notice that pain lingers longer than it has before, is a bit more intense, and perhaps instead of only happening when you exercise, it now appears when you are putting your groceries on a high shelf.

What causes this? Perhaps an illness, or even just the passage of time, which brought strength levels down for a bit while you continued on without any decrease in the volume of your activities.

Unless you’re experiencing any red flag symptoms that require a medical professional’s attention, the strategies we’ll share in chapters two and three will be good for this type of injury.

4. Was It Caused By Exhausted Adaptive Potential?

This cause is the most difficult to see, and is likely best assessed by a professional health care provider. It’s a complex issue that can take a keen eye and experience. But it is helpful to know the basic things to look out for.

Can be caused by improper healing of a prior trauma, or by the adaptations your body made to compensate for a prior trauma

The cause is often not the same as the new site of pain

Our bodies’ adaptive potential is defined as the ability to tolerate the various stresses in our daily activities. This is distinct from overuse or repetitive stress, in that the underlying problem is generally not at the area of our pain.

An injury of this kind happens when we’ve had a past trauma that appeared to heal, but in fact, compensated by affecting structures other than the compromised body part.

The true cause (the “culprit”) is often far removed from the site of pain (the “victim”), and the cause of these compensations is what needs to be addressed, rather than just treating the symptoms at the site of pain.

For example, you may have slipped and fallen on some icy ground last winter, and had some pain in your shoulder that got better after a couple of weeks.

This incident may have subtly changed your posture and how you hold your neck. Even though you initially had no pain in your neck, you soon notice a constant neck pain which seems to have appeared “out of nowhere” (this is where the “I bent down to pick up a pen and now I can’t move my neck!” comes in to play).

The simplest explanation is an overuse of those extensor muscles, but the case can be significantly more complicated. Let me elaborate.

A previous neck strain irritates a nerve root.

This irritated nerve root is then unable to provide a normal signal to your wrist extensor musculature.

These weakened electrical impulses may then cause a dysfunctional muscle contraction.

The weakened signal results in a weaker muscle.

This decreased force of contraction makes the muscles less capable and the tissue cannot withstand the external forces acting upon it.

Weak spots in your physical make-up (such as tight shoulders, trouble bending forward, neck stiffness with rotation to one direction) can create problems elsewhere in your body, and make you more vulnerable to injuries during your training.

Identifying and working on your problem areas can help prevent bigger problems in the future.

Get to Work on Addressing the Cause of Your Injury

Now that you understand where your injury is likely stemming from, you can start working on improving your condition. In the next chapters, we’ll show you how to do that.